Grixis Thieves
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Awesome. Congrats. I've been tinkering with this a lot recently.
Questions:
Is Gush good here? Seems counterintuitive to me that this deck would want to play it. I never did or would have pre-restriction and don't see why I would now, esp. over, say, Thirst. The land drops are just too precious in this deck, I've found.
Have you tried Thirst?
Do you miss Snapcaster and/or a removal spell? I've found Dismember to be invaluable in this archetype.
Is Notion Thief truly good, do you think? So much removal in the format nowadays. I have a hard time deciding. Dack + Thief IS game over of course but often it's like a 4-mana removal spell for their dude or just lightning rod for their swords, which would otherwise rot in their hand. Thoughts?
Did you try By Force? I love it so much given how much mana you can generate. -
@boggyb The gush was ok. I haven't tried Thirst. Gush is nice in that it was wasteland protection sometimes, and it's free to cast. The thirst sounds interesting to try out. Gush is easy to cut for something else I think. It wasn't great.
Snapcaster was in for a while, but I cut it. Didn't really need him most of the time.
Notion thief is super powerfull when he's good, and pitches to force when he's not. EOT notion thief into timewtister is game over. He's also why I like the deck cause it's a really fun card. I brought back in the MM's to help protect against removal. im sure you could cut them, but then again, notion thief in response to an opponents Jace activation is really sweet..
By force seems really good, and I'm gonna try it out. Ingot chewers were nice because they get around thorn really well. -
@mourningpalace Hey, have also been loving this list. Two things. Do you ever find yourself wanting More thief? And, would you consider adding Wheel of Fortune? I cant tell if this kind of thing is just my nostalgia getting the better of me but it works along the same line as twister and isn't that hard to fit since you are running Dack anyway. Congrats on the win!
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I don't even care if this list is good, I'm totally playing it at Vegas.
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@BandsWithOthers I don't think I would play more than 2 notion thief. There is enough draw and deck manipulation that 2 is plenty, and I often side one out.
Twister is better than wheel. It nukes their Graveyard as well, and pitches to force. I don't think you need two of that effect in the deck. Wheel or twister without notion thief is not great, since we are not a storm deck. -
@mourningpalace So You found Thirst for Knowledge just wasn't worth it? I'm curious about that. I suppose that without Gush around there's less pressure to try to play those types of cards. Also you've got card advantage from the delve spells and planeswalkers too.
I was testing a similar big blue deck but with Mentors instead of the Notion Thief/Dack combo and it seemed ok. I was running Thirst though, perhaps I might consider cutting them for more planeswalkers.
The other thing I've been brainstorming is a similar list to this but with one or two Paradoxical Outcomes. It's expensive and all, and it requires more artifact mana, but I've won nearly every game where I cast an Outcome. I keep thinking that if someone can find a build that is somewhere between the all-in P.O. decks and what you played it would be very good too.
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I was a hand grenade that never stopped exploding...
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@Islandswamp I didn't say it wasn't worth it, I just haven't tried it out over the gush yet. It may be better, but I am not sure yet.
I did run two paradoxical's for a bit at first. They just didn't seem to run smoothly in this deck. They don't really combo with the rest of the deck well, since we are not playing mentor or tendrils. -
I did see Rich do pretty well in the daily the last two nights. Main tweak it looks like he replaced gush with gitaxian probe. I think the gush is probably the cut one way or another for something better. Its kind of like the paradoxicals, just does not fit with what the deck is trying to do.
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@Islandswamp If you were playing with Mentors over Dack, keeping Thirst makes more sense as the only outlet besides Brainstorm to discard Blightsteel.
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I love having a vintage back where the restricted cards matter and you cannot reasonably fit all of them into a single list.
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This deck certainly interests me, although I question its viability compared to mentor.
One thing I'm wondering about is the eldrazi matchup - it doesn't seem very easy. Is it possible to build with that matchup in mind or are we conceding it?
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@mediumsteve Its not a horrible match up. I beat it in the swiss and top 8 on Saturday. Sideboard cards help (deluge, ingot/hurkyl's). We have a lot of mana sources, so the sphere effects are not as bad. They also have a hard time dealing with blightsteel or vault/key. I wouldn't say its a favorable match up, but its definitely not an auto concede.
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well, that's good to know.
I think that since grudge is your only green card you could replace it with By Force, and that lets you also replace the trop with a second island or some other mana source (mountain + switch fetches to 4 tarns?) to make your mana a bit more stable.
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@mediumsteve yep, I already made that cut from the original list to what I play now. Running two ingot chewers in the challenge event, but trying out by force now. I replaced trop with another underground sea.
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do you mind breaking the rough % of the time you win with various win conditions?
ie:
vault/key
blightsteel
jace ult
beats
concessions due to doing too many cool thingsThe Vintage format lives on broken cards, and I see no reason why there shouldn't be broken cards that benefit my particular deck of choice to an inordinate degree. I mean, that's only fair.
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@mediumsteve um, CLEARLY 100% on choice 5...
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@mediumsteve I have not gone back and reviewed each game, but the primary win conditions are vault/key and blightsteel, so those would be the way I won a lot of the time. Either an explosive combo kill right away, or controlling the game to the point I could vault/key.
Jace ultimate was usually only when I had vault key and the opponent made me go through the motions trying to time me out. It does come up though where you end up in a top deck battle and Jace usually wins out there. In general, Jace is just brainstorming every turn, so getting to a point where you are fate sealing them out, you were winning anyways in card advantage.
The BEST victories are when the opponent scoops to Dack + Notion Thief, or even better Notion Thief + Timetwister. It's probably correct to take out the timewtister, as it is not good otherwise, but it happens more often than you would think, and it feels really good to draw 14 cards and leave your opponent top decking.
I have also had opponents scoop to Notion thief in response to their own JTMS brainstorm activation. Now that one feels really good. -
@BandsWithOthers That does pretty much sum it up though lol.
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@mourningpalace said in Grixis Thieves:
@mediumsteve Its not a horrible match up. I beat it in the swiss and top 8 on Saturday. Sideboard cards help (deluge, ingot/hurkyl's). We have a lot of mana sources, so the sphere effects are not as bad. They also have a hard time dealing with blightsteel or vault/key. I wouldn't say its a favorable match up, but its definitely not an auto concede.
I think that Engineered Explosives in the place of Deluge would make a huge difference. Also one or two main deck removal spells, just because it's nice to be able to take out a nasty hatebear or whatever.
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@Islandswamp Yeah, I like the changes you made in the article on mtggoldfish. Going to test it our for sure.
Deluge was nice because it can hit a wide range of stuff and clear a whole board ], while EE is a little narrower in that it kills only same CMC, but can also kill other problematic permanents besides creatures (like the thorns you had mentioned). Mainly I ran the deluge over the EE because I didn't want to spend the 50+ tickets on an EE, when deluge was pretty effective (and cheap).
Only thing I don't like about the lightning bolts you added is they don't match up well against MM, but I suppose decks with MM you would side them out. It would be a meta question on if they should be in the main deck or not. In the vintage challenge, I played against shops twice, and eldrazi twice. The hurkyl's recall's were the best card in those match ups.
